My therapy journey, recovering from Borderline Personality Disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I write for welldoing.org , for Planet Mindful magazine, and for Muse Magazine Australia, under the name Clara Bridges. Listed in Top Ten Resources for BPD in 2016 by goodtherapy.org.

Daily Archives: October 10, 2015

I’m not sure whether it’s ‘the done thing’ to reblog one’s own post!I wrote this for World Mental Health Day last year, but these words from the Missy Higgins song ‘Nightminds’ were in my thoughts again today, and so I really wanted to share the post again.

I think these lyrics are very powerful, and what was in my mind as I was writing the post last year was not just a hope that compassion, acceptance and understanding about mental illness will continue to increase, at an ever faster pace; but a thankfulness for this online community where we share so much of ourselves with each other and try to shine a light into each others’ dark times. I believe that the support and acceptance we find here can make it easier for us to engage the ‘real world’ in a conversation about mental health, and to risk being seen as a ‘whole person’, mental health difficulties and all. That has certainly been my experience, and I hope it can be yours too….

In some parts of the world, 10 October – World Mental Health Day – is already over. In other parts of the world, the day is only just gathering momentum. But for as many as 450 million people around the world, it will be mental health day again tomorrow. And the next day. And the next.

For those 450 million people, today’s spotlight on mental health hasn’t made their darkness any lighter. Their hope is that it’s made the depth of that darkness more visible; its character more evident; its blackness more tangible; its presence more acceptable.

The world is changing – but slowly. Stigma and ignorance are gradually being chipped away by greater knowledge and understanding – but will they be eradicated? Maybe not in our lifetime. And maybe not in the lifetime, gone too soon, of those 1 million people every year, who let go of the ledge…